


of frosted veins

by vanitaslaughing



Series: darkest before dawn [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode Ignis Verse 2 Divergence, Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 04:30:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16422440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanitaslaughing/pseuds/vanitaslaughing
Summary: Something here was off, but in a familiar way that did not belong to him.It belonged into these pristine halls of his childhood home; something that belonged to his long-faded memory of his mother when she was alive and not burning, without her blood on his face as smoke filled his lungs and his arm felt like it was about to tear off entirely. Something that belonged to his sister.





	of frosted veins

**Author's Note:**

> again, set in the same universe as [tu fui, ego eris](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13910043/chapters/32012169); unlike 'of dragons past', this fic assumes you're. familiar with chapter 5 of tu fui, though.

“Highwind…?”

“Ayup?”

“Thank you.”

She only laughed and moved to the next box. “We’re the ones who should thank you. Results or not, you paid us enough to have us loyal to you and only you for thirty lousy years or more.”

He let out a snort. Out of all people… it was her and her mercenaries who were here. It could have been an entire fleet or no one at all, but instead it was Highwind’s entire crew.

“It is rather fascinating.”

“What is?”

“The fact that you and yours answered the call despite your obvious dislike for me.”

He had to admit, perhaps it was the fever that made him talk. He was not liable to talk to lowly grunts, let alone something like a _Commodore._ He had barely paid attention to most other officers and officials; all of which that had nearly caused a rebellion when Ulldor went commando in Altissia despite his orders to retreat. Ravus would have expected Aranea to laugh in his face; it was absolutely no secret that she harboured little love for the entire leading sector of the empire.

Still, it was rather interesting that she made her move after Lunafreya’s death. Why not earlier?

The woman sighed and leaned against the box she had been fiddling with a moment ago. “We deliberately cut all contact. Well, would have. It was all down by the time we picked up our shit and left, and all of a sudden while we’re takin’ a break, a call comes in. Labelled _command_ , no less. Same command that we assumed dead in the aftermath of Altissia. Permit me a _little_ curiosity every so often, High Commander, sir.”

They really only were in here because Aranea had insisted on getting something for the new arrivals, but none of her men were free at the moment. Since most of the newcomers were survivors of the Kingsglaive, they did not trust the Commodore at all, and Ravus had noticed even through the feverish haze he was in that staying behind was likely to get him into a verbal or actual fight with these people. That was how they had ended up inside one of Aranea’s airships, with him not entirely certain what she could have used help for, and Aranea bristling slightly as she called him ‘sir’.

“Drop the ‘sir’ crap.” He shook his head a little, trying not to focus on the fact that it immediately made him nauseous. “There’s no High Commander Fleuret and no Commodore Highwind here – we’re seeking refuge from the dark, which His Majesty Noctis so graciously permitted us to do despite being on the other side of the conflict.”

Aranea cracked one of her more crooked smiles, a grin that looked rather devilish overall. A classic Niff smile, as Ravus has come to learn over the past twelve years. As a woman from a country that had been in the war machine for so long that no one alive recalled what it was like to live in peace, it was to be expected.

“Never had a darn clue that you can be so straightforward, Mister Roundabout. I like it, not gonna lie.” Then she crossed her arms and the grin faded. “But you got a point. I’m just glad they didn’t burn me and the boys at the stake and we can be of help.”

“True, very true.” He closed his eyes and lowered his head a little.

“Say, are you feelin’ alright?”

What a useless, stupid question. Of course he wasn’t. He’d acted all strong and mighty with Noctis the other day, had told him that the people here needed him to keep himself together and that he could always grieve where prying eyes could not see him, but Ravus wasn’t any better himself. Talking business wasn’t that hard, even if the Marshal was a harsh conversational partner, and Aranea herself clearly knew how to handle herself in a situation like this. As expected from a mercenary, honestly.

He hadn’t actually cried since that day he had stormed into the room Noctis had holed himself up in to quite literally slap some sense into the king.

“Just a slight fever, I suppose.”

“Lots of people comin’ down with something. Heard the Marshal complaining about a headache a just yesterday.”

The only way to keep track of the time in the dark was with clocks. Staring up into the skies gave a vague enough idea, with the sun just barely behind these dark and heavy clouds but barely any light coming through that blanket. Eventually, everyone agreed, the sun would just vanish entirely behind all those specks of plasmodia that were floating about. The fact that Aranea knew it was yesterday rather than still the same day really threw Ravus off.

The lack of light in general threw him off. He’d barely registered that a day had passed. Or two days.

He kept his eyes closed and his head lowered.

“You _sure_ it’s just a fever, man?”

“Yes,” he breathed out, and heard Aranea walk away from the boxes. Just a moment later she shoved him against the wall of the airship and stared at him through narrowed eyes. “The hell!?”

Instead of saying anything, she put a hand on his forehead. If this situation weren’t so ridiculous, he would have laughed. Alas, her hand felt like it was made of liquid metal, hot and burning and all-around too distracting for him to let out a laugh.

Aranea clicked her tongue. “You’re cold as ice, man. Let’s getcha back to a bed. Can’t have you collapse in my airship.”

And that was the story of how High Commander Ravus Nox Fleuret, last surviving member of the Fleuret bloodline and just another man seeking refuge in a Lucian bastion with access to enough electricity to ward off Daemons, was dragged back to his bed by Aranea Highwind, esteemed mercenary and all-around tough customer.

* * *

By the time she was gone, he’d come to realise a few things about her and this situation. First, she was a decent enough woman. She’d deliberately not talked to him in the past, she had admitted, because there was something strange about him. Creepy, she called it a she shoved him onto his bed and made a move to his makeshift kitchen. But now that they were in the same boat, she said, there was no point in keeping up this strange behaviour. Maybe they could even fight together one of these days, she muttered as she nearly tipped over a mug she had slammed on the counter a moment earlier. Second, this situation was absurd but now that he thought of it, what with him on the bed and the ceiling above him turning slightly… it wasn’t unfamiliar. His sister had been in a rather similar situation, from the cold skin to the dizziness and nausea. People had assumed it had been the shock just as it had been with Ravus. But as Gentian put it that one evening a week after their mother had all but been butchered for being in the way, what Luna was going through at the time had been an awakening. Her powers were starting to awaken now that the old Oracle was dead, and that meant that now it was her time to become the next Oracle. The girl had cried into the Messenger’s arms then, and the shell-shocked brother had said nothing, only acknowledged what Gentiana told him to make this easier on her.

Of all the tricks the gods could be playing on him.

For the first time since Altissia and his outburst at Noctis, Ravus found himself crying. It weren’t furious tears this time, it wasn’t exhaustion screwing with his head.

* * *

The third thing he realised was when he stepped out after some rest. It was the next day, the calendar on his phone told him, and he was marginally better. Still shivering slightly, but the warm air of Lestallum was doing wonders on that front even in the dark. He slowly walked his usual route, only to find Marshal Leonis tap his foot on the ground almost _nervously._ Aranea had mentioned that he had been feeling under the weather as well, and Ravus reckoned that that was why this man had such an unpleasant expression on his face.

On the street up ahead, a few of the newcomer Glaives from the other day were standing around. It was no secret that every person available was undergoing a training regimen, one that even Ravus himself had joined until the Glaives had arrived and his strange fever had taken hold of him. The people needed escorts since not everyone was a hunter, a fighter.

He stopped behind Cor and took a deep, shaky breath. The more he shook off the veil of sleep, the clearer his surroundings became.

“Hey.”

Ravus blinked a few times. A minute or so passed in silence, before he realised that it had been directed at him. “Yes?”

The man had his arms crossed and he was still staring at the Glaives. They had all stopped and stood in a circle, urgently discussing something that Ravus couldn’t hear from here.

“Is there a chance you could go collect His Majesty for me?”

“Might I know why?”

Cor Leonis was infamous within the empire. After all, he was effectively undefeated in combat, and it were his actions that had destroyed more than one noble family but left one of the more well-known ones in utter shambles – despite that clearly not having been his intention. Not many could met him on the battlefield and lived to tell the tale, and those who had gone after him specifically after Insomnia fell never returned. More than one silent pyre had been raised with quiet whispers claiming that it had been another idiot who had scoured the wilds of Lucis despite knowing better than that.

He had been the man who had done most logistic talk with Aranea and Ravus over the last few days, all meant to ensure that the city and its new inhabitants were all safe. Clearly a man trained in more than just combat, though most people did not know about it.

Cor sighed and gestured at the Glaives that still stood there with their heads stuck together. “I need someone who knows a thing or three about magic, specifically also about who currently shares Noctis’ powers. So why not hear it from the horse’s mouth himself?”

“Fair enough.”

Against all predictions, the sun was rising in the distance. Barely more than a sliver of light, almost choked out by the clouds already. It wouldn’t be much longer and it would vanish entirely after all, and somehow he knew that it was way too late for the sun to rise. Everyone’s sleeping schedules had already gone haywire thanks to the perpetual lack of natural light. Electricity could only do so much.

He found Noctis eventually, perched on top of the Leveille, staring at the sunrise. He considered just forwarding what Cor had said, but he needed to think for a moment. Now that the fever was gone and his body didn’t feel like it had been dipped into ice water any more, he needed to sort his thoughts. There was really only one thing that this fever that left him feeling cold could be, but it didn’t really make sense the slightest. Unless… unless.

So he sat down next to the Lucian king, trying not to notice one of the notebooks that he and Lunafreya had sent back and forth since the day Tenebrae burnt.

“Any news from Niflheim?” Noctis’ voice was subdued, serious.

Ravus shook his head. “None whatsoever.” And that was the truth. Since they were stuck here together, he might as well continue telling the truth. “I offered Highwind almost all that remains of my family’s fortune, offered her an entire wing in Fenestala Manor – she still returned with nothing to show. At least the payment bought me her services for… roughly thirty years, she said.”

“The darkness won’t last thirty years. I swear.” He really wanted to believe that, but as he stared at the notebook in Noctis’ lap, all he could conjure up was this deep, empty hole in his heart that had been there since his mother’s murder and that the wound had never really closed, had festered and finally broken when Lunafreya died as she did.

How she had known her calling, how she had followed it to the bitter end knowing that no one would ever remember her as the girl and woman that she had been and only as a voice of the divine, a martyr who died for the greater good. How he ignored his calling – it was his duty to stand beside this king next to him, to ensure that he also walked the path of a martyr.

“Did you and Luna know it would come to this?” Noctis’ voice violently interrupted his thoughts, and he stared at nothing for a moment before he narrowed his eyes slightly.

Considering Noctis was still staring at the sunrise – or was it a sunset? – he was likely talking about the decline of light. “Vaguely. In order to cast out darkness the darkness needs to arrive first, but… I had not imagined it on that grand a scale, all things considered. I had thought that the Accursed would reveal themselves rather than cast all into eternal darkness. Luna…” His felt his own heart skip a beat as he thought of his late sister, saw her on the Altar of the Tidemother once more, felt the rain on his skin and the agonising hole in his heart only widened. “Luna likely knew.”

Noctis had no idea that he would never sit on his throne to rule. Ravus had a fair feeling that he would never rule Tenebrae either – if he survived the break of dawn, he figured not a single soul from Tenebrae would want him back. He didn’t want to be back. He might have offered Fenestala Manor to the people who refused to come to Lucis, but he had no intention of ever returning to these halls that smelled of smoke and fire, of lightning and saltwater, of flowers and bittersweet memories of those two he swore to protect that he had lost without being able to do a damned thing about it.

“… Why are you up here?”

Ravus let out a snort. This really wasn’t the time to be crying – just as he had told Noctis. “The Marshal sent me to grab you. Apparently there’s something odd happening with the survivors of the Kingsglaive that arrived yesterday, and he wanted your counsel since it seems magic-related somehow.”

* * *

Fever, disorientation, dizziness and nausea. Other people claimed that he felt like an icicle rather than burning up. Almost sudden recovery after some sleep, and the distant murmur of _something_ that didn’t seem quite right but also felt like it had always been there. He could hear Lunafreya’s soft voice as she slung her arms around him in the days following the fall of Fenestala Manor, could hear the sharp click of Gentiana’s shoes against the marble floor when his sister reassured him that it was alright. How she put her hands on his injured arm, much too small and much too fragile to be the hands of the next Oracle. Much too clean to be put against a wound that was likely infected because the conquerors did not care about the conquered – and only the next Oracle mattered anyway. How they gleamed all of a sudden, how Gentiana whispered something in Luna’s ears; how the pain subsided and the golden light vanished a moment later.

He knew his eyes were unfocused and staring at nothing, but there was something stirring in the depths of his very soul. Something…

“Are you quite okay, sir?” He had completely missed whatever Noctis had ordered these men and women to do, but all eyes were on him now.

It had to look odd how he stretched out his arm only to open and close his hand a few times. “I… don’t know… but something here is...”

Something here was off, but in a familiar way that did not belong to _him._

It belonged into these pristine halls of his childhood home; something that belonged to his long-faded memory of his mother when she was alive and not burning, without her blood on his face as smoke filled his lungs and his arm felt like it was about to tear off entirely. Something that belonged to his sister, into those hands that she pressed against his shoulder, into those hands that shook as for the first time in her life since their mother died, Lunafreya showed her weakness and admitted that she did not have the strength to go on and wanted her brother to continue.

It felt like an icicle tore its way through his veins, spiked in the tips of his flesh-and-blood hand. For a split second he caught the spark that danced from his fingertips to the palm of his hand, and he all but staggered backwards.

“Impossible!”

It was a hoarse whisper.

Because this was supposed to be impossible. This was the ancient magic that their bloodline commanded; a power reserved only for Oracles and the daughters of the Fleurets. Something that no son was ever meant to command, something that his mother and sister had used as their heritage demanded. Light wasn’t supposed to answer a son of House Fleuret, let alone turn his blood into ice when the magic awoke within him.

But here he was. He had suffered through the same symptoms that Lunafreya had suffered under, in a much shorter timespan than she had.

He didn’t really have time to dwell on this revelation either, because mere minutes later he saw the soft green glow of someone healing. A skill reserved to his family, a skill reserved to but the most ridiculously magic-drenched concoctions of the Caelum bloodline. It was… almost too much.

* * *

“You might wanna try hangin’ a little with the Glaives. I ain’t the right person for all this magic mumbo-jumbo.”

Ravus screwed up his face as he watched another spark fizzle out and die on his hand.

“’Sides, you’re getting the shakes again. You’re taking a break, mister.”

And just like that, this unsuccessful training session was over again. Just as it had gone the last few days, just as it had gone even in his dreams. Aranea tossed him something that suspiciously looked like a slice of dried Garula, and his stomach revolted against the smell a moment later. Yes, dried Garula.

He gagged a little, and the Commodore only laughed as she went to get some hot water for a cup of tea again.

“Gag all you want, I know a legitimate tactic against spellcasters holed up somewhere in the past was to starve ‘em slowly because casting repeatedly really burns some calories.”

“When did you start caring about what happens to me?”

“You’re kind of an honorary member of my mercs. Y’know, technically part of the Niff army, stuck in a Lucian city, and so on? We’re in the same boat here. Airship. Whatever.”

He snorted.

“And not gonna lie, I kinda wanna see how you made your way to High Commander as an outsider. People say you’re a real firecracker on the battlefield. I wanna see that, but I wanna see ya when you’re at the height of your powers.”

“Is that a challenge, Commodore?”

“Consider it one. So learn how to control that magic nonsense, and then we’ll work together in the field or duke it out somewhere.”

* * *

Light was cold. Healing hands were cold, icy even. It seemed so ironic, since Shiva and her bitter cold were generally seen as the deity and the powers who resided over death; in Solheim water and coldness were explicitly linked to death. Yet in the wake of the Scourge, a sickness that was but the raging flames of a betrayed god, those who could heal it had hands as cold as death itself. Oracles, women of stunning beauty, who looked like their hands should be warm and comforting, instead had hands cool and uncomfortable. Ravus remembered the day his sister Luna became the Oracle Lunafreya, how she walked back towards him with a calm expression on her face. With her hands cold as ice against his bloodstained face, with the flames still raging around them even as Niflheim, the very men and women who had set this forest aflame came to douse the fire.

How cold her hands were in Altissia. A direct opposition to his warm hand, a contrast to the sharp metal one he gained after losing the arm to the flames of retribution he had so sincerely wanted to rain upon Lucis.

She had always walked the silent path of death, hand in hand with the Glacian even as she healed the people that clung to life. And Ravus and Noctis both stood on the fireswept path that Luna never tread on until the waves washed her away and quelled the fire burning in Noctis and Ravus. Now he was on the edge of that path and the other, but there would be no goddess leading him to the very end of it. At least he did not see her now. Ravus was on his own, the fire in his soul still burning but ice running through his veins.

But now as he sat on the ground with those Lucian Glaives, he started to understand. The power to heal was not given lightly. It was something that had to be cherished, something that needed a kind person to flourish with. He could not heal the Scourge – by the gods he had tried with Lunafreya’s incantation. But nothing of the sort had happened. He remained unable to cleanse, likely because he lacked the passion and permission from the gods.

There were no male Oracles for some reason or another. He never questioned it because it was just one of the rules of his bloodline.

But thanks to Lunafreya, he at least could heal now.

Learning how to control the light that seeped through his icy veins now as if it had only been dormant since he was born was only a matter of time.

And as much as he had hated Lucis, as much as that grudge still remained, he had to admit that these people weren’t so bad. The Glaives weren’t his friends, not in the way that Aranea was his friend these days. But they were his comrades now. And if there was one thing a Commander fought for, then it were his comrades.

Even if they were the men and women of the man he had hated – they all had a common foe now.

His calling was to stand beside the Chosen where Luna had guided him.

Years too late, Ravus Nox Fleuret understood his calling. Years too late, he realised that this was the reason Lunafreya had chosen that empty, cold path that led to her death.

The least he could do was honour his bloodline’s calling by supporting the last pillar of light Eos had.


End file.
